The Chaos Chronicles: Book 3: Meddling with Destiny
by Gingehfish
Summary: Since their last adventure, Annie and Ryan have been safely married and are on a camping trip in the mountains shortly after their honeymoon when disaster strikes again! When they find themselves living amongst the Ancients, Annie & Co. must complete a task before they are left alone for good—and a difficult one, at that! {sequel to CHAOS IN THE CLANS and REACHING THROUGH TIME}
1. Chapter 1

**Hello, this is Gingehfish, back with another fanfiction! This is the third "book" in my Chaos Chronicles series. I had fun writing the first two, and I have plans for a **_**lot**_** more after this one, but I don't know if you guys would want to read them or if I shouldn't bother. Please, could you leave your opinion about this in your reviews? Thanks!  
**

**For those of you who have not read the prequels to this fanfiction, please go to my profile and find my two fanfics "The Chaos Chronicles: Book 1: Chaos in the Clans" and "The Chaos Chronicles: Book 2: Reaching Through Time". If you don't, this won't make much sense. XD**

**Thanks for reading! Enjoy!**

* * *

**MEDDLING WITH DESTINY**

* * *

"_Her voice crackled through the room with the keenness of a whip. 'So... I was right... something happened to interrupt Destiny... some sort of __**MEDDLING**__ occurred?' she asked Hiccup. 'Some sort of __**ACCIDENT?**__ What was it? What was it? What was it?'"_

—Excellinor the Witch, from _How to Break a Dragon's Heart_ by Cressida Cowell

* * *

**CHAPTER ONE**

* * *

The girl was sitting on a bench watching the sunset when the boy walked up to her. She smiled up at him as he sat down beside her.

The watching figures shifted impatiently from their vantage point in the stars. "Is he going to do it at all?" a male voice hissed in the language of cats.

"Patience," a female voice lectured in the same language.

"Yes, hush," another female voice, this in a tone that revealed her to be human, though she was speaking the language of cats as well. "He'll get to it in time."

"Hi, Ryan," the girl said. "What took you?"

"That's what I'm saying," another human voice, this one male, grumbled. He was immediately shushed by the females.

A fifth figure, separate from the two humans and the two cats, said nothing. He was a cat, the only one who could have been seen clearly if anyone had been watching the five. He had no fur and bulging blind eyes, and he was known to the few cats who knew of his existence as Rock.

Rock looked down on the two humans. A peculiar emotion stirred in his chest, peculiar for two reasons: first, that he even felt it, as he had learned to ignore emotion long ago; and second, that it was pity. Rock rarely felt pity for anyone for any reason, but these two humans had been through far too much already, and he and his—did he dare call them "companions"?—were about to put them through more.

"Traffic," the boy, Ryan, replied to his girlfriend. He put his hand in his pocket and fingered something in it.

The other tomcat growled impatiently, but said nothing.

The girl smiled. The boy smiled back at her. They began to make small talk.

Even the females in the watching group were beginning to feel impatient. Rock did not. This would happen in time, as everything would. He had learned that lesson long ago, and was surprised that the others, who were far older than him, had not.

"Annie," the boy said at last, "I've been thinking."

The five watchers leaned forward eagerly, even Rock.

"We've known each other for quite some time now," Ryan continued, "and loved each other for almost as long."

"Yes," the girl, Annie, agreed. She seemed to sense what was coming.

"We're still both kind of young, at least to our families—"

The girl smirked. She was far older than she looked.

"—but I don't think that there's much point in putting this off any further. You're nineteen, I'm twenty, and we've been, ah, 'mates' since you were twelve." The boy pulled a small ring from his pocket. He didn't look very nervous, as he knew that the girl would agree with him.

The girl smiled slowly, waiting for the boy to finish.

"Anneliese Betheny Eyre," the boy said dramatically, "will you marry me?"

"Why, Ryan Michael Crimsen, of course."

Rock nodded, satisfied.

"At last," the man grumbled.

"Oh, you have no sense of romance," the woman sniffed.

* * *

Far away, in a parallel universe, in fact, a cat was dying.

Her name was Dovewing, known to the Clans for moons as Dovewing the Wise. When granted a wish from StarClan, she had requested to live until the end of the Clans. She regretted that decision now. As all of her loved ones had withered and died, she retreated up into the territory past the Moonpool, making herself a den and sharing tongues with her ancestors—and descendants, as the years rolled by—each night.

A few days ago, the last Clan cat had died. Most of the Clans had been wiped out a few years back by a virulent disease, and the survivors had banded together into one group, which they simply called "the Clan". Their plan was to separate again into four as more cats arrived to join them, but few came. Eventually, the Clan disintegrated, and this was when Dovewing began to age rapidly.

After a few moons, the last Clan cat had died of old age in seclusion, the last remnant of a long legacy. It was two days later when Dovewing admitted to herself that she was dying.

She sighed, wearier than she had ever felt. She felt all of her moons pressing down on her, and she closed her eyes, waiting for death to come and take her to StarClan for a few moons before they were completely forgotten and Faded out of existence.

She felt the cold black paw of Death cover her, and her eyes flickered open once more before they closed for the last time...

...and snapped open again in a different time and _quite_ a different place.


	2. Chapter 2

**Helloo! Here's chapter two! I wasn't going to post it until sometime next week, but I finished the chapter I was working on early, so I thought, "Why not?"**

**Thanks for your support. Although, only one person answered my question, so I'll restate it: Would you guys like to see more of Annie & Co.? I feel I must warn you, the ideas I have in store are less about Annie and more about her descendants, although she does make cameos. ;D**

**And I've been meaning to say this for a while. Don't feel pressured or anything, but I have a forum called FroggyClan and we desperately need more members. We've been going for a year and only have four active members, and two of them are me and my RL-mod-friend. So if you're willing, could you check it out? Thanks! :D**

* * *

**CHAPTER TWO**

* * *

I thought I was done with adventure when I returned to my world after the whole 'forming-the-Clans' incident.

Obviously not.

* * *

It began on a pleasantly warm day in early June.

Ryan and I had been married about three weeks previously, on May 23, so now I was Annie Crimsen instead of Annie Eyre. We were hiking in the Fircrest Mountains for some obscure reason. I had been against this trip from the start, but Ryan insisted, so I finally gave in. He had been awfully mysterious about his reasons for this trip, and I was looking forward to finding out why we were out in the mountains in the first place. I have never been enthusiastic about hiking, and Ryan knew that, so his motivations were lost in obscurity for now.

He had originally wanted to camp for a night or two, but I flatly refused. I _hate_ camping. It's so buggy, and cold, and uncomfortable, and dirty, etc, etc, etc.

Well, for being up in high altitude, it was a nice, warm day. It would be hotter back down on the ground, but for now I was fairly satisfied with the temperature. It was around noon, and I was getting hungry for lunch. Ryan insisted we press on instead of stopping to eat, something I grouchily complained about for half an hour before he let us stop.

"Why couldn't we have eaten before?" I grumbled.

He just smiled at me, a sweet but infuriating smile. "You'll see."

I ground my teeth in frustration. It wasn't that I didn't love my new husband, but he was being awfully aggravating right now!

I was just taking my first bite into the bagel I had prepared earlier when I heard a voice shout, "Annie!"

I turned my head to see a smiling, vaguely familiar young woman who looked to be about my age walking over with a grin. I frowned for a moment, trying to remember where I had seen her. She had tan skin, long, dark hair kept back in a ponytail, and brown eyes. And then I remembered, and broke into a grin of my own.

"Sam!" I cried. Samantha Xavier was my friend from grades five through eight, and had been part of my first adventure in the _Warriors_ Clans. She was the first of my class to become a leader, Wolfstar of ShadowClan. I was second, as Gingerstar of ThunderClan, and although in a ferocious battle over territory we had each taken each other's last life, we bore only a little resentment toward each other about that particular incident.

We had been fast frienemies for four years before we went to different high schools. We (or at least I) had tried to keep in touch, but eventually we just drifted apart. I hadn't seen or heard from her in years.

There was a chuckle behind me. I turned and gave Ryan a friendly glare. "You knew about this all along, didn't you?" I demanded as Sam walked up to us.

"Of course," he grinned. I rolled my eyes in exasperation, but I was no longer irritated.

"Why all the secrecy?" I insisted.

Ryan shrugged, smiling. "We wanted it to be a surprise."

Sam walked up and sat down on the rock next to us. "Well, _he_ wanted it to be a surprise," she said.

"Why the mountains, though?" I asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"I like hiking," Sam said with a shrug.

"_I_ don't."

She grinned at me impishly. "I know."

I stuck my tongue out at her, but I didn't really mean it.

"So," I said after a brief pause, "how have you been?"

Sam shrugged carelessly. "Fine, for the most part. I'm off to college in August."

"Good for you," I said with approval. "I might sometime soon, too, but I don't really have many long-term plans right now other than marriage."

Sam laughed. "Oh, right, you got married," she said.

I rolled my eyes. "No, really. I assume, since you arranged this with Ryan, that you know him?"

"Sort of," she shrugged. "He just said that he thought it would be good if we got together for an afternoon since he knew that we were old friends." She paused, shooting a glance at the watching Ryan, before lowering her voice and murmuring, "I'm surprised you settled with someone other than Lionblaze, honestly."

I laughed loudly, to her surprise. "Really, Sam? Did you not read _Dawn of the Clans_?"

"What, that _Warriors_ series? You know that I was never really into that."

"Not even after what happened to us in sixth grade?"

Sam blinked, surprised, and shot a quick look at Ryan. "Does he know about this?" she hissed.

I laughed again. "Of course. Wolfstar, 'he' is Lionblaze."

Her expression was so amusing as it dawned on her that even Ryan, who didn't find much in the human world very amusing, laughed.

We chatted for a while, inquiring about each other's state of health and catching up on the years we had been apart. It was very nice, and I made a mental note to thank Ryan for this later. I wouldn't do it to Sam's face, though—I wouldn't like her to know how much I truly enjoyed this meeting. It was a matter of principle, and while we didn't really hate each other, we sure made it seem like that.

It was nice to act like a child for a while, too, I will admit. Many an inside joke was unearthed in our conversation.

After Ryan, Sam and I finished our lunches, I was outvoted two to one in my efforts to discontinue the hike. Grumbling good-naturedly, I followed after my husband and old friend up the mountain.

After an hour or so, we reached a waterfall in the mountainside. While I was still unhappy about this whole trip, I had begun to enjoy it and even suggested that we hike closer to it. Sam and Ryan agreed, and we made our way up to it.

Upon closer inspection, we found that there was a cave behind the waterfall. While I thought that this sort of thing should be off limits to tourists, there was nothing blocking off the cave entrance. The adventurous Sam immediately, without consulting me or Ryan, ducked under the water behind the waterfall to explore the cave beyond.

I almost called out, "Sam, wait!" but then I realized that doing so would be futile. She was already gone.

I exchanged a glance with Ryan, and we followed her.


	3. Chapter 3

**I have been informed by my friend Shadowstroke, who is currently masquerading as Squirrel the Man, that she PMed some of you guys about being the inspiration for Sam. In case you believed her... she was the inspiration for Sam. XD I can't believe she'd do that... yes I can, that's what she's like. XD**

* * *

**CHAPTER THREE**

* * *

The cave we entered was large and spacious. There was a lot of room for us, as the ceilings were tall and the walls far apart. The lighting was dim, the sunlight through the waterfall fractured on the ground. Stalactites hung from the ceiling here and there, although the few stalagmites on the ground were small. There were smaller caves, so shallow they were more like hollows, really, leading off to the sides in the walls of the cavern, and a few larger tunnels that I assumed led to more caves. At the far end of the cavern, there was a medium-sized rock.

Something stirred in my memory. This place looked vaguely familiar. I furrowed my brows in concentration, trying to recall where I had seen this cave before, but was interrupted by Ryan calling, "Annie! Are you coming?"

He and Sam were already on the far side of the cave, about to duck into the tallest of the tunnels. I shoved the nagging thought of recognition into the back of my mind and followed them.

The tunnel was tight, but it wasn't very long and we could walk through it bent over, not crawling. Soon it opened up into a cave much smaller than the previous one, but still tall enough to stand up in. I straightened, grateful to be able to stand all the way.

Unlike the previous cavern, this one was dripping with stalagmites and stalactites. Still, the majority of the cave was taken up by a sizable pool. Other puddles of water were scattered around the area, but the pool that drew my eyes was the largest. Sunlight shone down from a crack in the ceiling onto the pool, and I narrowed my eyes to reduce the glare.

Sam was crouched down beside the pool with a finger trailing through the water. "This water is really cold," she said.

I rolled my eyes. "It's mountain water, Sam, what did you expect?"

She shrugged.

I frowned. That nagging feeling was back. It was almost as if I had been here before.

"I keep getting the weirdest feeling of déjà vu," I confessed. "But it's a little more than that, actually. It keeps coming back."

To my surprise, Ryan nodded, wearing a frown of his own. "Yeah, me too. I keep thinking that I've seen this place before, but I've never been hiking in the Fircrest Mountains before."

Sam gave both of us an odd look. "Well, I have no idea what you're talking about," she grinned. "But this is kind of fun." She took her finger out of the water. "My finger's starting to go numb," she admitted, making a face.

I exchanged a long look with Ryan. There were a lot of possibilities. Since we had obviously never been here, something weird was going on. And when weird things started to happen in my life, uninvited things follow. Usually things that have to do with turning into a cat and saving the _Warriors_ world.

We were interrupted in our thoughts by a loud "WOAH!" from Sam. She had stood up, slipped on the slippery floor, and fallen into the pool.

Gasping in concern, I carefully but quickly made my way over where she was floundering the water. She had not been fully submerged, but had gotten very wet and was spitting water out of her mouth and blinking to clear her eyes.

"You all right?" I asked, concerned.

"Yes," she said through a mouthful of water, bobbing up and down. "But this water is _really_ cold! And surprisingly deep!"

I leaned over, reaching out my hand to help her out of the water. However, the ground in this spot was wetter and slipperier than I had anticipated, and with my already clumsy balance plus Sam's weight caused me to slip and fall and... tumble into the water myself.

The water was shockingly cold, and I winced at the thought of hiking back down the mountain in these sopping wet clothes, especially as evening wore on. It was, as Sam had said, surprisingly deep—my feet didn't touch the bottom of the pool, and I was five feet, eight and a half inches tall.

In my accidental fall, Sam had completely submerged in the water, and for a few moments where I was spluttering and trying to tread water, I didn't notice that she didn't re-emerge. Once I realized that, I shouted, "Sam!", looked hastily at Ryan, then dove beneath the water as I heard my husband shout, "Annie! Wait!"

Immediately I realized my mistake.

The feeling of being soaked to the bone with cold instantly vanished. I heard a faint splash behind me, telling me that Ryan had also jumped in, but that was not my main worry.

My main worry was the familiar tingling sensation all over my body and the faint sparkling orange mist that began to cloud my vision. I heard a faint poof, and then the mist surrounded me so I was unable to see anything else through the murky water.

* * *

Having your molecules pulled apart and rearranged into a different body isn't actually all that painful.

I felt a tingling sensation all over my body, and my vision blurred. When my eyesight cleared, I was standing in exactly the same place I had been sitting—except I was a cat.

Two other cats stood next to me, blinking in confusion. One was very clearly Sam. She looked exactly the same as she had when she was Wolfstar, with a thick, long smoky gray pelt and very yellow eyes. The other was also very clearly Lionblaze. Golden fur, amber eyes—yes, that was the Lionblaze I knew and loved, not the Ryan I had married or the Thunder I had had kits with. Still, something was off about his appearance—he looked to be about apprentice age! He was smaller and, dare I say it, fluffier, and quite clearly younger.

Wolfstar looked to be about the age of a typical new warrior—older than Ryan's current form, but still pretty young.

When I glanced in the pool next to me, I got quite a shock: what with Lionblaze and Wolfstar looking as they had in the forest, I had assumed that I would look like I had when I was Gingerstar, with ginger fur and blue eyes.

Instead, I was a pure white she-cat with fur of middling length—it was longer than my pelt as Gingerstar, but shorter than my fur as Shadow. My eyes were yellow—not as deep and dark as Wolfstar's eyes, but still yellow.

"Annie?" Ryan asked anxiously, looking at me in concern. "Is that you?"

"Yes," I replied, confused. "Although I don't know why I look different when you two look the same."

"I don't know either," Sam admitted. Her voice was slightly shaky and there was a wild look in her eyes, but other than that she seemed fine. There was a pause. Then:

"What _happened_?" Sam asked.

I shook my head as Ryan answered, "I don't know."

As I looked around the room, I realized that I did, in fact, recognize this place. It was the Cave of Pointed Stones in the Tribe's home, the Cave of Rushing Water! StarClan (or maybe the Tribe of Endless Hunting) had sent us to the Tribe! I wondered what time period we were in: before the Clans came to the Lake? The same time I had been leader? A long time afterward?

Sam sat down. "Okay," she said firmly, "Lionblaze, Annie, please explain what happened in _Dawn of the Clans_, since apparently you were part of it."

"All right," I began. "It started on a trip to my cousin's house. Ryan was my boyfriend, and he and his foster brother Jeff came to visit us because Jeff and my cousin Macks were friends. My other cousin, Josie, and I went exploring in the nearby quarry with Ryan, and..."

Eventually, keeping our voices hushed so that if there were cats in the larger cave, they wouldn't hear us, I explained what had happened. Ryan jumped in from time to time to explain things that had happened to him and not to me.

We had just reached the end of our tale when, padding on soft paws, a cat found us.

Sam opened her mouth to say something about our story, when suddenly, her eyes widened in disbelief, causing Ryan and I to whirl around to see the cat behind us.

The cat was a gray tabby tom with clear, piercing blue eyes. There was no thin veil of blindness over them, which momentarily confused me. But all in a flash, I realized who this cat was, and I cried out in shock, along with the other two cats:

"Jayfeather!"


	4. Chapter 4

**So. I think that you deserve a head's up for this. Come November, I'm going to be participating in in NaNoWriMo (Nation Novel Writing Month), which means that I'm not going to be spending any time on my fanfictions. Depending on how motivated and busy I am for the rest of October, I don't know whether or not this will be my last update before then. When December comes (or I finish my NaNoWriMo story), I promise I'll be back!**

* * *

**CHAPTER FOUR**

* * *

Jayfeather widened his eyes incredulously. "I—Lion's Roar! How do you—"

"Lion's Roar?" Ryan echoed, confused. "Jayfeather—it's Lionblaze! Your brother!"

Jayfeather looked very shocked. "I—Lionblaze—Lion's Roar—" He paused, looking at Sam. "_Wolfstar_?" he mewed, dumbfounded. "And who are you?" he said, turning to me.

"Gingerstar," I replied.

"But—I—I mean—" Jayfeather stammered. "_What's going on_?" he asked finally. "Aren't you done with this?"

I growled. "I thought I was," I replied.

Jayfeather sat down, in a daze. "This—this doesn't make sense," he mumbled. "Does this mean that _I'm_ not done with saving the world? Because, I swear, I thought—"

Ryan interrupted his brother. "Jayfeather, where are we—the mountains, with the Tribe of Rushing Water? And why are you calling me Lion's Roar?"

"So, this is just going to be another one of those saving-the-universe things?" Sam asked in mock disdain. "I wish I could have gotten a note."

"Don't we all," I responded sarcastically.

"All right—you know what happened after the whole Sky thing, right?" Jayfeather asked. "Right. Good. So, StarClan finally followed up on their promise and sent me back in time to be Jay's Wing permanently."

"What?" Sam interrupted. "I'm sorry, but I'm totally lost."

"You really should have read the books," I muttered. "All right, so Jayfeather went back in time a couple of times to form the Tribe of Rushing Water. In that time, he became Jay's Wing, a member of this group of cats who used to live at the lake before coming to the mountains because of excessive Twoleg activity. He named a she-cat called Half Moon the first Stoneteller, and it just so happened that he and Half Moon were in love. Unfortunately, in one of the greatest tragedies in _Warriors_ history, he was later unable to return to her."

Ryan's mouth twitched in a slight smile, but he said nothing as I continued.

"So for his magical StarClan wish, he decided to come back here to live with Half Moon in the pre-Tribe world. Except the whole forming-the-Clans thing happened in between that—well, technically after, you know, these time-travel things are always so confusing—"

Sam let out a short bark of laughter.

"—and then here we are," I finished, "with Jayfeather—sorry, Jay's Wing—explaining to us what just happened."

"I don't know!" he protested. "Okay—I've been here for about a year in Twoleg time. I made up with Half Moon, who has sort of taken control after Stone Song moved to the elder's den, but no one's calling her Stoneteller. Once newleaf came, we had another casting of the stones as to whether or not to stay, but Half Moon delivered such a passionate speech about the mountains that most chose to stay. Furled Bracken said we would all die up here, and I have a feeling that Jagged Lightning strongly agrees with him, but they stayed here with the rest of us." He paused. "Also, Half Moon is expecting my kits." Jay's Wing looked very pleased about that. I couldn't blame him.

I smiled warmly. "Congratulations!" I said, Sam echoing me. Lionblaze purred and butted his head on his brother's shoulder lightly in congratulations—something that looked very silly because in this form, he was smaller than Jay's Wing.

Jay's Wing explained to us the finer points of this society, and confided his worries that the mountain cats were not changing to become more like the Tribe of Rushing Water, though they had begun referring to themselves as "the Tribe".

"I think we're stuck here," I said at last. "StarClan—or whoever it is that sends us here, since StarClan doesn't exist at this point in time—put us here for a purpose. We're going to have to do something here before we can go—if they let us go before we die."

Everyone nodded. "Are we going to be living with this Tribe of yours?" Sam asked. "Or at least meeting them?"

"I don't see why not," Jay's Wing replied. "Especially since Lion's Roar apparently now knows he is Lionblaze. He's going to have to stay, or Shy Fawn will be worried out her mind."

"Shy Fawn?" Ryan asked in confusion. "Who's she?"

Jay's Wing gave the golden tom a wry smile. "In this time and place? Your mother."

Ryan widened his eyes in shock. "But—I'm not your brother?"

"No," Jay's Wing admitted. "I don't think I'm related to you at all, in fact. Dovewing, or Dove's Wing in this time, is my sister, though."

I resisted the urge to smile. Sam's whiskers were quivering, a sign that she was trying not to laugh.

Lion's Roar looked flabbergasted at the thought of not being Jayfeather's brother. "Um... okay," he said at last.

Jay's Wing turned to Sam and I. "How are we going to announce you two?" he asked. "I suppose I could introduce you as Annie and... uh..."

"Sam," she supplied.

"Annie and Sam, but do you really want that? Would you rather go by something else?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I kind of miss being Gingerstar, but that wouldn't work with this fur, and it really does feel weird giving cats my real name. I'll go by something else."

"I'll go by Wolfstar, or Wolfclaw, if that's all right with you," Sam shrugged.

Jay's Wing hesitated. "Maybe not 'Wolfstar'," he said apologetically. "It wouldn't be good for them to hear of that type of name yet. I'm trying to ease them into naming their kits the Tribe of Rushing Water's way—I think that Half Moon and I will name our kits like that, trying to start a tradition—so putting in another type of naming system would make things even more confusing."

"Should we go by names with two words, like they do?" I suggested. "It might make them more comfortable with us."

Jay's Wing opened his mouth to reply when a she-cat's voice drifted down the tunnel. "Jay's Wing? Have you found Lion's Roar yet?"

In padded a white she-cat with green eyes and a round belly. Half Moon. Oh dear. Jay's Wing would have a lot of explaining to do.

Jay's Wing widened his eyes and turned. "Um—Half Moon! Hello!"

She gave him a curious look, then looked at Sam and I with suspicion. "Who are those cats? Oh, hello, Lion's Roar."

"Hi, Half Moon," he replied uncomfortably.

"I'm—um—" I made a split-second decision. "I am... Snow Falling on Rock. And this is..."

Sam paused, trying to choose a name, then continued, "Wolf with Sharp Claws."

Half Moon blinked. "Hello, Snow Falling on Rock and Wolf with Sharp Claws. I am Half Moon, leader of the Tribe. Where did you come from?"

I gave Jay's Wing a glance. He looked nervous and uncomfortable. He hadn't told his mate the truth about him yet. In my opinion, he should have told her a long time ago, and I reminded myself to tell him so sometime later.

"We come from... across the mountains," Wolf with Sharp Claws replied. "And you can just call me Wolf, and her Snow."

"Yes," I confirmed. "We left our Tribe, the... Tribe of Shaded Pines, a while ago, and have been traveling."

Jay's Wing finally decided to help us out. "I met Snow and Wolf when I was, uh, traveling when I left after naming you Healer."

Half Moon narrowed her eyes. I could tell she didn't believe us, and there was something that looked like hurt in her eyes, as if maybe she thought that Jay's Wing had left her to spend time with us, and he was in love with one of us or something. I felt bad for her.

"Yes, Jay's Wing was a good friend for a little while. Back then we were traveling with my... relatives, Wind that Blows Through Trees and River where Rocks are Large. But Wind and River returned home, and Wolf and I have been exploring these mountains ever since," I continued our tale.

"We were exploring a system of caves when we stumbled upon this young tom, Lion's Roar, in this cave," Wolf finished.

"How interesting," Half Moon said, but there was still suspicion in her eyes. "Well, what are you going to do now?"

"I suggested that they stay with us for a while," Jay's Wing added.

The hurt flashed in Half Moon's eyes, confirming my earlier suspicions that she thought that Jay's Wing loved one of us and not her, or at least had had a brief affair. I mentally winced in sympathy, and reminded myself to convince her otherwise.

She sighed. "Well, all right," she said with reluctance. I noticed that Jay's Wing looked slightly baffled at her attitude toward us. Apparently he had lost his mind-reading powers when he became Jay's Wing permanently.

"Come with me," Half Moon said with finality. "I will introduce you to the rest of the Tribe."


End file.
